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Palestinian Baby Girl Dies Under Israeli Tank Fire
GAZA CITY, May 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In spite of diplomatic efforts to renew Middle East negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, tension between both sides continues, bringing more death tolls, new agencies reported.
A Palestinian baby girl was killed, and her teenaged sister seriously wounded, in an Israeli bombardment of a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Twenty other people were hurt, Palestinian hospital and security officials said.
Four-month-old Iman Hajjour died as Israeli forces shelled Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Iman's mother, Suzanne Hajo, was seriously wounded in the attack.
The tank shelling damaged a school, two apartment buildings and a number of houses, witnesses said. This brings the death toll to 513 since the Palestinian Intifada erupted last September, according to Western news agencies. They comprise 424 Palestinians, 75 Israelis, 13 Israeli Arabs and one German.
With most of the victims are Palestinian children and teenagers. Some Palestinian officials say the actual number of victims is much higher and that the Israeli military clampdown has caused thousands of injuries.
Following the baby girl's death, the secretary of the Palestinian presidency, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, called on Monday for the immediate deployment of an international protection force.
"After this butchery, we call on the international community to provide immediate international protection to the Palestinian people," Abdel Rahim said.
"We call on the two guarantors of the peace process [the United States and Russia] and the European Union to act to put an end to this aggression which begins to affect children, women and old people," he said.
"This aggression comes after the Israeli government gave the green light to the army to act without restraint," Abdel Rahim added.
Elsewhere, Israeli forces maintained the pressure in the West Bank, staging two raids into Palestinian-controlled territory in what appeared to be a new tactic.
A day after Israeli troops seized control of parts of the town of Beit Jala for several hours to "clear out gunmen", they briefly entered two other Zone A areas under exclusive Palestinian control, in Tulkarem in the north, and at Dar Salah east of Bethlehem.
In Tulkarem, army troops and border guards crossed the frontier of Zone A territory and used a bulldozer to destroy a police post which they say Palestinians were using as a firing position, a senior border guard officer said.
A spokesman for the Rafudyeh hospital in Tulkarem said that one Palestinian, Hussein Khader Abu Tamam, 45, had died after shell splinters hit him in the chest.
Later, Israeli forces staged an incursion into Palestinian-controlled territory east of Bethlehem in pursuit of a car from which shots had been fired on a patrol, Palestinian security officials said.
Backed by armored vehicles, the forces entered the village of Dar Salah and set off a 20-minute exchange of fire with Palestinian police, before redeploying in the surrounding area.
Israeli forces had previously refrained from entering Palestinian territory in the West Bank, though they have made several incursions in Gaza.
However, following an escalation of violence last week, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the army had to think of new ways to react to Palestinian attacks, and on Sunday Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said, "In principle I have approved any entry into Zone A, if that is necessary to guarantee security."
In Gaza City, an adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Nabil Abu Rudeina, condemned the raids. "We ask the American administration and the international community to prevent these breaches and the war of attrition carried out by Sharon's government," he said.
Meanwhile, Jordan's King Abdullah II flew to France on Monday for talks with President Jacques Chirac on an Egyptian-Jordanian initiative to end Israeli-Palestinian violence, but there was growing gloom about its chances of success.
On Sunday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mussa, speaking after a summit between Abdullah and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, said the plan was heading nowhere because of Israeli resistance and its chances of success were "minimal".
The plan calls for confidence-building measures before a resumption of negotiations, but the Israelis have said they object to a call for a freeze on their settlements in the Palestinian territories and are demanding a complete cessation of Palestinian violence as the essential first step.
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